GROVE CITY, Ohio -- For nearly two hours Monday, copper theft at a Grove City power substation left thousands without power.
As of 9 a.m., 10,785 residential and business AEP customers were without power. Traffic signals were also affected by the outage. Power was restored by 11 a.m.
AEP officials said the theft occurred over the weekend or Sunday night and was discovered Monday morning. It was immediately reported to the sheriff's office.
AEP workers closed the substation to allow them to repair the damage.
"We had to interrupt power to nearly 12,000 customers in the Grove City area to protect our employees and the public while our crews repaired damage caused by these thefts," says Natalie McCord, AEP Ohio Columbus District manager distribution system.
"This theft created an extremely hazardous situation that potentially could have resulted in serious injury or death to our employees or anyone near the station. As soon as the theft was discovered, it was reported to local law enforcement and we acted immediately to de-energize the station to eliminate the risk of dangerous, high voltage shock. Thieves can be and have been seriously injured or killed when removing copper from energized electrical equipment."
According to AEP, these incidents also are very costly to the company and potentially could affect customers' future electric rates. It costs AEP Ohio roughly $25,000 per incident on average to repair. Since mid-June, Approximately 40 AEP Ohio substations have been hit by copper thieves. Approximately 12 of these break-ins required outages to make repairs, affecting more than 66,000 AEP Ohio customers.
Copper prices are rising again and this year American Electric Power substations have been hit hard.
At a substation on Westerville Road nearly $11,000 worth of copper wire was stolen in early August.
That substation was hit a few times this year.
In June the fence at an AEP yard on Hall Road was cut and $5,000 worth of wire was stolen.
In May an AEP substation on Shannon Road was broken into and 30 feet of copper ground wire was stolen from what are called wave traps. 1,400 feet of copper was also taken from a spool.
In that case the police report said the thieves put themselves at great risk of electrocution.
About a year ago, AEP started replacing copper wire with copper-clad wire, which works the same but is worthless at a scrap yard.
Monday afternoon AEP couldn't say if what was stolen from the substation near Grove City was copper or it's much less expensive substitute.
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